


Green Silk

by foolishnotions



Series: Tokens from the Roadside [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Sparrow Hill Road - Seanan McGuire
Genre: Car Accidents, Crossover, Gen, Ghost Stories, Ghosts, Hitchhiking, Rage, anger issues, desperate people, faustian bargains, maybe dead girls do make friends, paranormal weirdness, superheroes and dead girls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-11
Updated: 2016-06-11
Packaged: 2018-07-14 11:29:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7169213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foolishnotions/pseuds/foolishnotions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce Banner is an impossible thing, and something about him is more desperate and more lost than any routewitch has a right to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Green Silk

“Get in.”

If there's such thing as a hitchhiking ghost’s prayer, then that's the answer to it. Please let the car stop. Please let the driver understand. Please let them be going the right way. Please let them have a coat in the seat. Please be kind.

“Get in,” is the answer to all those things in different measures. It's the call of the routewitch , the sound of comfort and of life freely lent for an hour or two while you sit beside someone who really, properly, knows the road. 

At least, that's how it's supposed to go. 

This one picked me up twenty minutes ago outside Winnipeg and I was so thankful when the flashers came on and a coat wrapped around my shoulders before I even touched the car door. A real coat too, thick-lined and warm enough to keep out Winnipeg wind. 

“Get in,” he says, gently but with no room to object. Honestly, I wasn’t going to argue with him, but it’s a formality with routewitches; they like to be in control on their roads. 

I give the car a quick look before hopping into the passenger seat. Nondescript blue sedan too clean for a what he is, really. Nothing about the witch that picked me up feels right. He’s clean, polite, soft-spoken; things I’m not used to when I meet people like this on the road, but he knows what I am and he knows the script and god dammit it’s Winnipeg in February and I can feel the warmth in the car so really, the only right answer is “thank you” as I climb inside.

In a moment, the door is shut and we’re on our way. I have the time to study him once we’re in the car, since he doesn't seem to want to chat just yet. If he’s anything, he’s the strangest routewitch I’ve ever encountered. His car is old, and it tells the story of distance and love, but it’s not, strictly speaking, this guy’s love. He came by this vehicle recently and he keeps it clean enough that the roads won’t recognise him from the dirt. It’s clear he’s not the queen, so I’m not sure why he might do that. Still, his face is kind and he’s polite as he offers me tea from a thermos wedged between the seats. 

Coffee’s my usual thing but it’s freezing out and the liquid is warm so I’m not going to argue. Anyway, it’s oddly soothing when I take my first sip. 

We’ve been driving almost ten minutes when he finally asks me where I’m going. 

“Anywhere with better weather than this,” I say with a shrug. I had a vague notion that I wanted to make for the border, cross back into the States but not really anything more than that. For now, I’m happy to go where he’s going. “I’m Rose,” I tell him with a bit of a smile. 

Usually, that’s enough. Usually, in a car like this, with a driver like this, that’s plenty. His glance in my direction tells me he knows what I am, and not who I am. What is with this routewitch? 

“Nice to meet you Rose. I’m Bruce”. It’s been five minutes since I introduced myself when he finally works those words out into the air between us. Whatever weird thing is going on with him, he’s not sharing it with me, not unless I help him open up, and I’m not sure that that’s my job. It takes a moment for him to think to pass me a container of food. It’s all apple slices and carrot sticks and trail mix and feels like a child’s bag lunch. Something tells me Bruce isn’t much of a cheeseburger guy, so I thank him and take a bite of an apple slice. It’s oddly comforting; being dead means never having to care about what I eat when I have a coat on but it’s nice that he cares about my health even now that I don’t have any. Then again, I haven’t eaten a fresh fruit almost since I was alive and the change is heavenly.

Bruce nods and returns his eyes to the road and we go on for a while in a vaguely southeastern direction before he speaks again. 

“I’m afraid I don’t know the ghosts of the region very well, Rose,” he sounds sorrier than he should be when he tells me that and I don’t understand. The living can’t know everything. Hell, neither can the dead. That’s why I can’t tell what he’s getting at. 

Damn but I wish he was just a little more conversational. 

I tell him it’s all right, that there are so many ghosts on the road, you can’t know every one of them, all the time and that at least he caught on that I was a hitcher. That got a laugh out of him but it was a quiet, empty thing and I’m starting to think he's working around to something.   
Shit, why is he being so impossible to suss out. I hate that.

Bruce worries his lip between his teeth for a moment as I finish up the apple slices and wait for him to decide I'm ready for what he has to tell me. God, does he think all ghosts have some freakish, eternal patience?  
I'm about to tell him that I don't, that I can't play this game forever, his special status on the roads be damned when the words start falling out of him.  
“I'm sorry to lead you on like this, Rose,” he begins and it's clear that now that he's begun, he's not going to be able to stop until he tells me everything, so I let him. I sit silently in his front seat while he treats it like some kind of confessional and I already hate where this is going. 

If this guy isn't a real for real, I am running right the hell back to the queen when this is over. 

“The thing is that I need the help of a road ghost, Rose,” oh god, please don't be about to ask what he’s about to. Please don't make me do this. 

“I need you to take me to the Crossroads .” His voice is small when he says it, and it's clear he's been working up the nerve to ask since long before he picked me up.

Whatever cosmic force arranges my meetings with the routewitches, this isn't funny. I put down the tea I was getting ready to drink before my hands start to shake and I drop it in my lap. Bruce glances at me between stretches of watching the road, eyes a little more expectant, lingering a little longer each time. 

I wish he's focus on the goddamn road and stop looking at me like that. 

“What? Why? What do you need the Crossroads for?” I practically shriek my question and I'm surprised by the alarm in my voice. It's not that I'm surprised by the need, or by someone with enough desperation to seek out a deal— that’s banal— but why this one, and why me? Haven't I run into enough trouble at the Crossroads? 

Bruce doesn't dignify my outburst with an answer, he just glances gives me another too-long glance and says something to himself before returning his eyes to the road. I don’t understand what he said, but I do understand when he asks me to just please take him there.

He sounds so desperate. I didn't know people could sound that desperate. 

The coat he gave me doesn’t feel as warm as it did a minute ago, and the tea in my hands doesn’t taste like ashes, but it also doesn't taste warm and comforting anymore. This is the wrong kind of person to go looking for a Crossroads, the wrong guy to need to make a deal. Forget that he knows better. Forget that he picked me up and offered to take me somewhere before springing this on me. Forget that he was driving around Winnipeg in the winter looking for a road ghost. Forget all that for a second, this is someone who remembers the winter coat, who offers me healthy food because apparently he cares about my afterlife even though I can’t eat myself sick while I’m dead.

How does somebody as kind as that get to need a Crossroads? 

I don't get a chance to ask him what he wants from the Crossroads, try to find him another way because all of a sudden I smell ashes and lilies. It's powerful and cloying and it came out of nowhere. I almost choke on it before I realise why. 

One, two, three horns scream and a car in the oncoming lane swerves into another as we cross the centre line. Shit. How did this happen, what the hell kind of routewitch lets this happen?   
The good news is that he’s been good to his car, loved her even though the relationship is new. She does her best for him, fighting for that little bit of extra traction, that extra two seconds to react and pull us out before the worst of it. 

None of it helps. 

We’re mired in three lanes of snow and twisted metal and pooled, burning gasoline before anything can be done. I can’t tell whether anyone has died yet. I can't see anyone rise so I crawl across the empty driver’s seat for a better look but after a moment I stop cold.

Oh shit. The driver’s seat is empty. Where the hell is Bruce?

He's alive, wherever he is because I'm still solid but I can't see him anywhere. Shit why isn't he helping me, he should know better. 

There’s a roar and a crash and in less than a second, I have to abandon my search for the man who picked me up. I keep my coat on for the moment, scramble out of the wrecked vehicle and look around to find the source of the crash. What I see stops me cold. 

I have seen a lot of things. I’ve been part of a lot of weird shit that happens in the Twilight. This is not a part of any of it. 

The thing behind me, enormous and full of rage roars again and sweeps the wreckage away into the ditch on the side of the road. This time people scramble free from under the wreckage. Survivors. There are going to be survivors. 

I’m about to go to them when I’m intercepted. By a gigantic green leg. This might actually qualify as worse than the encounter with the Maggie Dhu. The leg kicks and sends me sailing backwards, leaving me winded, with some nasty scrapes on my skin. 

God, being dead is supposed to mean not having to deal with this kind of indignity. 

That’s not really my biggest problem, though. That thing I can't really identify as being part of any America, Daylight, Twilight, or otherwise, has wheeled on me. Taken a personal interest in crushing the afterlife out of me. And for something so big, he’s really fast.

I'm faster.

My coat hits the ground just before his fist descends on me and I’ve never been so happy for that itchy, awkward feeling of someone touching me when I’m not wearing a coat because the fist passes through me like I’m not even there. Which honestly I suppose I’m not now that I’m back in the Twilight. The creature that owns the first doesn’t know that though, not that it gets time to process. His momentum sends his whole body sailing through me before I get a chance to step aside. He sails through what’s left of the wreckage too, finally coming to a stop in the ditch.

He stays down, watches me, blinking. His rage seems to have been knocked out of him, replaced by confusion. He doesn’t seem as terrifying now so I begin to approach. As I do, I finally get a good look at him, and I stop cold.

I know him. God, I know him. 

“You. You couldn’t slow down. You couldn’t pull over,” my voice is raising fast and I can’t really stop it. His rage may be spent but mine is just getting started. “You had to spend too much time trying to get me to help you and not enough time watching the road, didn’t you?” 

Bruce stays quiet while I’m yelling at him; doesn’t interrupt or defend himself. He just, takes it. While I’m talking the wind whips green silk around my legs again and dammit, I’m back in my prom dress. I guess this is what my rage gets me: a green silk gown in a prairie winter. 

I keep yelling at him though I've stopped paying attention to what I'm saying as I do. In my own rage, I’m also too worked up to notice him change; it isn't until the green of his skin has faded and turned mostly to a mix of flesh and frostbite that I notice he's shrinking and returning to his human shape. I stop speaking and point to the place where my coat was left behind on the road. One of us, at least, should be warm tonight. He watches me for a moment with a disoriented and kind of sad expression on his face before getting up out of the snow to find some clothes. 

I'm not ready to hear his explanation for all of this until he's dressed.

It takes him a while to recover whatever's left of his clothes that survived and I let him do it on his own, not that I could have helped him if I wanted to in my current insubstantial state. Instead, I wait for him to calm down and warm up while I seethe, hoping that my control over my clothing reasserts itself. 

No such luck, I guess I get to do my scolding while I’m wearing green.

It feels like forever in the cold and wind but after a while, Bruce has redressed himself as best he can and sat down on the edge of the ditch, as out of the wind as possible, all things considered. His eyes are moving from the crash to me, and back. I think he understands that there’s no way he can help the survivors and that the dead are long outside his control. I know that face. I’ve worn that face. 

“He’s why.” 

I’d almost given up on ever getting an answer out of this guy and it throws me off a little when Bruce finally speaks. I’m actually speechless when I realise it’s an explanation.

“The other guy, the carnage back there? He’s why I need the Crossroads,” now that he’s talking, Bruce can’t seem to stop, so I just, let him explain until he doesn’t have anything else to say. It’s not like I know what to tell him, anyway.

“I can’t keep letting this happen,” he goes on. “There’s nowhere safe from this and someone gets hurt every time. I’m out of choices.” Oh you poor, short-sighted thing. You took to the road without ever understanding what the Crossroads is, or what a bargain can do.

“A routewitch should know better,” I finally reply. “You took up with them, and you promised to understand the road and the things that live on it. You’re telling me now that you did this to find a road ghost? That people got hurt, people died because you needed what? Some kind of do-over?” 

It’s not fair but I’m also not nearly as calmed down as I thought I was. 

I stop talking when his jaw sets though, and for a second it looks like we’re going to do this all over again but he just stands up and starts pacing.

The next thing he says surprises me more than the accident, more than the monster, more than his original request ever could have. 

“That isn’t what I want. I want it over,” he doesn’t sound desperate, or sad, or any of the other things I thought I heard before. Now he just sounds lost. 

I don’t know what to do with lost. Then again, maybe I’m not supposed to. 

“I can’t help you once you get there. You have to already know that,” I tell him. He does. It’s clear that he does when he stops in front of me and holds out his hand. It’s shaking. 

I can’t help him with that, either.


End file.
